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5 Gender Stereotypes That Used to Be the Opposite

Editor’s Note: We at Everyday Feminism would like to note that discussions of gender comparing men’s and women’s experiences can be erasive of non-binary genders. While these conversations can be liberating for people who identify as binary men or women, we believe they should be more inclusive, and we recognize that gender identities aren’t determined by what we were assigned at birth.

“Damn it, son, if you want to be a man and live under my roof, you gotta wear pink.”

Pink for boys, blue for girls – if these gender stereotypes used to be the opposite, then do they really mean anything for our identities?

You might think that women are naturally one way, and men are another. But that view doesn’t give us much room for the real complexities of who we are as individuals – and it also erases the experiences of folks like non-binary people.

So let’s find out just how arbitrary our ideas about gender really are by checking out some of the things our society says are “masculine” and “feminine” – and how they used to be completely different. Laci Green and her comedian pals break it down for this MTV Braless episode.

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism

Click for the Transcript

Speaker 1:Pink was for boys and blue was for girls. Now, pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Which means, none of it has ever mattered.

Text: Rise up! Take no $#!%! Let it out! MTV Braless with Laci Green

Laci:Do you think that women are naturally one way and men another? Well, a lot of the gender stereotypes that we use to define the sexes used to be the exact opposite. Pink was for boys and blue was for girls. A 1918 editorial stated that pink was a more decided and stronger color, more suitable for the boy. While blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

Speaker 3:How did this switch?

Speaker 4:My instinctual reaction to this color is that this is for girls, even though I want to put this all over my body.

Speaker 5:Damn it, son, if you want to be a man and live under my roof, you gotta wear pink.

Speaker 6:I used to love fuchsia, that was my color, fuchsia, because it sounded like “future” a little bit. I had to default to blue, you know, I was growing around a lot of dudes in Harlem… Right back to blue.

Speaker 1:One of the weirdest situations I ever saw was when I was in a grocery store and I saw a little boy who really wanted this pink cereal and his father was like, “No, you want sports figures” and he was like, “I just like strawberries.”

Speaker 3:Why are we only gendering these two colors? Did orange do something bad?

Laci:High heels were originally for men. They were developed for Persian warriors and then European men saw that and they were like, “Hey, I want some of that.”

Speaker 7:What? Are you kidding me? I’m loving this because I’m 5’2″, so bring this trend back so I can start dating in New York City.

Speaker 4:It’s because they looked at this and they said, “You know what’s badass? Eventual back problems.”

Laci:All I’m gonna say is, if you expect women today to wear high heels, then you better be wearing them, too.

Computer programming was once considered women’s work. In the 1940s when the first computers were built, it was primarily female mathematicians who wrote the programs. This job was considered below men who built the hardware.

Speaker 3:Of course it was, and then guys were like, “Oh, you can make a whole lot of money doing this? This is going to be the future? Hey, women, get out.”

Speaker 1:Women got pushed out of technology in the same way that men got pushed out of emotions, and everyone suffers now.

Speaker 6:You know there was guy who really wanted to do computer programming, but it was for women. He probably had to tell his parents and he just didn’t know how to do it.

Laci:In the ’60s, Cosmo actually wrote that computer programming was just like planning dinner: Women are naturals at it.

Speaker 4:I don’t think either gender is a natural at computer programming. Having a dick or vagina has nothing to do with computers.

Laci:Cheerleading started out as being “too masculine” for girls. Let me read this quote from The Nation in 1911: “The reputation of having been a valiant cheerleader is one of the most valuable things that a boy can take away from college.” Do you know who was a cheerleader? Dwight Eisenhower.

Speaker 5:What we’re learning here is that everything is for boys until it’s not – and then it’s for girls and boys can’t touch it.

Speaker 6:Men, men, men, men, men, men!

Speaker 5:I think that’s what we’re learning.

Laci:Crying was considered manly for ages, it was seen as a sign of honesty, integrity, and strength.

Speaker 7:This is just every guy trying not to cry. “No, I’m not going to miss you at all, man. You’re my bro, but it’s not—is it hot in here, man? Sweat, got a little—did you see that? It was a little bead of sweat.”

Speaker 5:Let’s bring back dudes crying. I’m into this trend. I think it’s healthier for everyone to just let it out.

Speaker 3:Crying is like bench pressing your tear ducts – just got to work through that pain.

Speaker 6:I think it’s time the world is okay with men crying in public. Let’s cry in public.

Speaker 4:I’ve cried on the sidewalk, I’ve cried in a Target, I’ve cried in an escalator, and I’ve cried in front of one Apple employee who did give me a free computer. I think that seems pretty manly to me.

Laci:Well, there you have it. Maybe masculine and feminine aren’t quite as rigid as they seem. I’ll see you next time. Bye bye!

Laci Green is a sex education activist living in Los Angeles. She runs the popular Sex Plus Youtube channel, which now has well over 1,000,000 subscribers and viewers in all 196 countries. The project is made up of a biweekly video series,daily blogging, a robust university lecture circuit, and community activism. She also hosts MTV’s Braless, in addition to producing videos for Planned Parenthood.